Question

I am trying to find a way to log useful context from a bunch of threads. The problem is that a lot of code is dealt with on Events that are arriving via threadpool threads (as far as I can tell) so their names are not in relation to any context. The problem can be demonstrated with the following code:

class Program
{
    private static readonly log4net.ILog log = log4net.LogManager.GetLogger(System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        new Thread(TestThis).Start("ThreadA");
        new Thread(TestThis).Start("ThreadB");
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    private static void TestThis(object name)
    {
        var nameStr = (string)name;
        Thread.CurrentThread.Name = nameStr;
        log4net.ThreadContext.Properties["ThreadContext"] = nameStr;
        log4net.LogicalThreadContext.Properties["LogicalThreadContext"] = nameStr;
        log.Debug("From Thread itself");
        ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(x => log.Debug("From threadpool Thread: " + nameStr));
    }
}

The Conversion pattern is:

%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%property] - %message%newline

The output is like so:

2010-05-21 15:08:02,357 [ThreadA] DEBUG LogicalContextTest.Program [{LogicalThreadContext=ThreadA, log4net:HostName=xxx, ThreadContext=ThreadA}] - From Thread itself
2010-05-21 15:08:02,357 [ThreadB] DEBUG LogicalContextTest.Program [{LogicalThreadContext=ThreadB, log4net:HostName=xxx, ThreadContext=ThreadB}] - From Thread itself
2010-05-21 15:08:02,404 [7] DEBUG LogicalContextTest.Program [{log4net:HostName=xxx}] - From threadpool Thread: ThreadA
2010-05-21 15:08:02,420 [16] DEBUG LogicalContextTest.Program [{log4net:HostName=xxx}] - From threadpool Thread: ThreadB

As you can see the last two rows have no Names of useful information to distinguish the 2 threads, other than manually adding the name to the message (which I want to avoid). How can I get the Name/Context into the log for the threadpool threads without adding it to the message at every call or needing to set the property again in every callback.

Answer 1

The context information in log4net is per thread, so every time you start a new thread you have to add your context information to it. You can use properties, or you can use the NDC. The NDC is per thread too, so you would still have to add it to each thread’s context at some point, which might or might not be what you’re looking for. It would save you from adding it to the message itself though. In your example it would be something like this:

ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(x => NDC.Push("nameStr")); log.Debug("From threadpool Thread: " + nameStr));

Here’s a link to the documentation for NDC.

All in all the effect is similar to using properties, just like what you have in your example. The only difference is that the NDC can be stacked so that every time that you push a value on the stack it will get concatenated to the message. It also supports the using statement, which makes for cleaner code.